Case Number 19626: Small Claims Court

Amish Grace

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All Rise...

Judge Clark Douglas doubts he could demonstrate the grace and forgiveness depicted in this film.

The Charge

Life changes. Faith remains.

The Case

On October 2nd, 2006, a man named Charles Carl Roberts IV walked into the
West Nickel Mines School (the primary school of a local Amish community) in
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. After holding female students hostage for a
brief period of time, Roberts began shooting. He killed five young girls and
wounded five more before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide. The
story naturally became the subject of national media attention, but as the
details developed, the emphasis was placed on the surprising reaction of the
Amish community. The members of the community chose to forgive the shooter and
reconcile with his family members, showing astonishing grace and tenderness in
the face of overwhelming tragedy. Considerably less surprising is the fact that
this tale was quickly turned into a Lifetime made-for-television movie, Amish
Grace.

The film is a gentle, good-natured, well-intentioned drama that does all it
can to remain respectful, but there's a certain sense that the most respectful
thing would have been to avoid turning the story into a Lifetime movie to begin
with. It's noted at numerous points throughout the film that the Amish are not
fond of the media, and it's clear that most would not be happy about the idea of
this horrifying event being recreated for television so soon after the tragedy.
The authors of the novel upon which the film was based distanced themselves from
the production, refusing to collaborate with the filmmakers in any way (aside
from selling the rights, naturally) out of respect for the feelings of the
affected Amish community.

However, let's set aside the question of whether it was a good idea to make
this film. The film has been made and that is that. So is it worth watching?
Well, I'll put it this way: Amish Grace is pretty much on the level of
quality that one generally expects from a Lifetime movie, albeit one that deals
with particularly painful material (though Lifetime is known for producing
tearjerkers, surely few stories contain as much emotional dynamite as a tale of
innocent Amish girls being brutally murdered). There were certainly moments when
I found myself a bit shaken emotionally, though I have to admit these moments
were not so much generated by the skill of the filmmakers as by the real-life
story (and my own memories of it) upon which the film is based.

The movie is best when it's working with the smaller details: the specifics
of life in the Amish community, the overbearing guilt of the woman (Tammy
Blanchard, Cadillac Records) who was
married to the murderer, and particularly the conversations on the subject of
forgiveness. It's that last item that really packs a punch: beneath the
official, benevolent, forgiving response of the community leaders are
individuals who cannot help but hold burning hatred towards the man that killed
these children. However, Amish Grace trips over itself when handling some
of the big plot developments and the major details, doing a bit too much
exploitative fictionalizing for the film's own good and occasionally entering
the sort of overbearing "sermonizing mode" that afflicts so many
Christian films.

The performances aren't exactly nuanced but they get the job done well
enough. Tammy Blanchard's performance was the most affecting to me, reminiscent
of Marcia Gay Harden's similarly distraught character in the overlooked American Gun. The central character of
the story is the fictional Ida Grabey (Kimberly Williams-Paisley, According
to Jim), who has the most trouble forgiving the killer. Williams-Paisley
handles the role well, but Matt Letscher (Eli Stone) has a bit of trouble
in making her husband a convincing character. The story is largely seen through
the eyes of a reporter named Jill Green (Fay Masterson, Paparazzi), but the character never really
registers.

Fox supplied us with a screener disc of Amish Grace featuring subpar
audio and video, so I am unable to comment on the quality of either. No
supplements are included on the disc.